OK.
Now, it's back to a few prose poems,
a long one right now called We Never Choose Our Fathers.
It's really about father figures and how they choose us
and in some ways we choose them, but it's not
about my own father really although who knows what's
at the origin of these things.
We never choose our fathers
On a good day his curve-balls loops more inches
than he needs to fool your bad
Nervous, you dig in force yourself to face him
He's bent over examining the law he slipped through your lower
lip
You pronounce his name silently at breakfast,
washing it down with each spoonful of cold cereal?
Fat, your liver refuses to break down, it coats every bite
The protein caged until you are dense with it
Hunched over the toilet, straining
He's the boy you sat next to at boarding school,
whose blue bulged with the right answers
Senior year you elected him, the long haired valedictorian
Notice how he looks at you his eyes fixed
Just last of your nose, expressionless as rubber balls
A few summers ago he took a room in your head
He's in there now writing your poems
Each time they look a little more like his
When he scribbles something on a postcard
That last year the winter, the stamp
rained bled to the fineness of a watercolor
You read over his words your hunger
driving you back over each stroke
until you are almost in his mouth
The dark oval repeating and repeating
like a string of zeros and a bank statement
Strange that you should feel so empty
The sky out your bedroom window blank in bed
leaning back on one elbow
You try to imagine how God looked the day before you
were conceived